Big changes afoot...

First bit of news... I will now be kegging most of my beers in the future. The occasional beer will still be bottled, like the holiday beer I am brewing this x-mas day to be enjoyed over next year's holiday(more on that another time)... or if my kegs are nowhere near finished and I am itching to brew another batch and so have no where to put it.... but other than situations like those, future batches will go directly into the keg from the secondary. This will speed up the time-to-consumption by removing the 2+ week conditioning period usually required. So no more priming sugars and no more month-long waits from brew day to drink day. Also, if you are a regular recipient of my brews, then you can expect growlers instead if bottles.

My first beer to be poured from the kegerator is a dry-hopped American Brown Ale styled beer. This is very much like batch 11, but this one contains all Cascade hops. I brewed it a little over a week ago and plan to move it from the secondary to the keg tomorrow.. assuming it is ready. If all goes to plan, I will be making my first pull from the kegerator on x-mas eve.

To see more about the creation of the kegerator, visit the new page I created to document the process. And speaking of mybrewing, there are other changes made, as well. So check it out.... (nothing overly exciting and no huge amounts of content... but a little more to look at.. a little change.)

And stay tuned to learn more about the 2 batches I have planned for christmas day brewing...

Cheers...

Bottled #13

Narrowly escaping catastrophe, I bottled the special bitter yesterday with 1/3 cup of corn sugar into 50 12oz bottles. The taste is good, but it should be even better with a few bubbles and a bit of a chill.

The catastrophe that almost was involved my bottling bucket toppling over as I was about to start siphoning the beer out of the secondary. Luckily, I was able to stop the beer from starting it's movement, I sealed the fermenter back up, and I re-sanitized everything and dissolved a new batch of sugar for the bottles. The remainder of bottling was without incident.

I look forward to trying this beer in a week, but it will more likely be ready in 2.

The final gravity was 1.016, bringing the abv content to around 5.8%.

Rack #13

Tonight I racked #13, the Daily Bitter. The gravity had dropped nicely about .04 units, which translates to about 5.2% alcohol so far. It could drop a little more in the next week before bottling. The taste was good. It is amazing (but probably shouldn't be) how much of a positive difference Maris Otter malt makes in the flavor compared to the amber or light extract I was using before. The beer does need a little more time to smooth out, but I expect this to be an awesome beer... maybe I will need to brew another batch of this before too long.

Another brew activity for tonight has been related to yeast. From the beginning, I have been picky about the yeast I choose to brew with... meaning I have paid more than necessary in order to get premium liquid yeast cultures for my beer. In the past, I have spread this cost out among several batches by brewing several beers in a row, pouring the new wort on top of the yeast left over from the last batch. With this batch, I once again bought the good yeast, but I only brewed one batch. So in order to maximize the value of my yeast, I am attempting to save the yeast from the primary fermenter for future batches. My methods are less than spectacular, but I am trying to at least keep things sanitized so that in a few weeks, when I brew again, I can try to use the yeast again. My method has been to pour the yeast into sanitized vessels and refridgerating. In a couple of weeks, I will add my yeast to a starter to re-vitalize and hopefully keep healthy for another go-round. We'll see how it goes.

HOPS!!

A quick note on what I found at my local homebrew store.... Hops... and plenty of them. Evidently (and I did ask about it) the Hops availability crunch is on the way out. There are plenty of hops available, and the prices are lowering slightly again... The Hops fridge at the store was packed full of hops of many different varieties and they are no longer limiting purchase quantities... Sweet. They even had 4oz packages of whole Amarillo and Cascade hops available. There may be a hopped up IPA in my future.... or maybe another hopped up Brown Ale.

This is reason to celebrate.

Cheers...

Daily Bitter

Today I am brewing again after a couple months. I am thinking that by the time this one has conditioned, I should have some room in my fridge for it.

This is my first all-grain recipe for what is designed to be an ESB-style beer. This happens to be my favorite style these days which I would be happy to grab on a daily basis to drink... hence the name "Daily Bitter". I have brewed beers in the past that I called ESB's (or TSB's), but my previous brews were extract brews, which limited the ingredient options drastically. This one is different. My primary grain is Maris Otter, one of the quintessential malts used to brew the special bitters that represent the style. Additionally, I am using high-alpha Magnum hops for bittering and some smooth Challenger Hops for added aroma. I look forward to drinking this one.

So... the vanilla porter ended up being a very good porter, but with a slightly excessive amount of carbonation and not much vanilla flavor. Disappointing. (It still is good porter, though... and the carbonation, while being more than I expected and a little unruly when first opened, doesn't really affect the drinking enjoyment at all...)

I am speculating that during the bottle-conditioning, the yeast didn't quit after the priming sugar and continued eating the natural vanilla sugars. (or maybe it ate the vanilla first.) At any rate, the vanilla flavor was gone and the carbonation was more than expected.

Something to consider... Since I am using less than the standard dose of priming sugars, maybe I do not need to wait the standard full 2 weeks for conditioning...

Late Edit: I posted a question about this to the AHA (American Homebrewing Association) email board. The first response I received was that it was most likely not the vanilla bean but a wild yeast that was at some point introduced to the beer... possibly from the beans themselves...

Today I bottled batch #12 - the Special Vanilla Porter. It tasted pretty good at bottling time. I was able to fill 48 12oz bottles. Final Gravity was about 1.018. Puts this one at about 5.5-5.7% ABV. Ready to drink in about 2 weeks.

What is so special about this Vanilla Porter, you ask? Well, I think that any vanilla porter should be considered special. But this one used some high dollar vanilla beans from the whole foods. I splurged, but I found it to be worth it. The beer has a nice clean vanilla taste, but it doesn't overpower the porter at all. Very nice.